How many really leave Qantas? Some 500 Qantas jobs will go in the embattled company’s latest cost-cutting drive. But how many departed in the last round of redundancies? “To my knowledge,” says one insider, “not one single pilot was made redundant. Is Qantas making phantom announcements to make it look like its doing something?” We would have thought the bad headlines aren’t worth the effort, but who knows?
Nine diverts IT support to London. Apparently new Nine Entertainment employees (across all divisions, from ACP Magazines to television) are having to wait a while to receive a company computer because management decided to direct all resources to making sure Nine has the London Olympics well and truly covered later this year. Our company mole says it’s leading to an IT shortage, so newbies are asked to twiddle their thumbs and wait.
Nile’s call for ‘traditional Aussie marriage’. Christian crusader and NSW MP Fred Nile has written to “concerned Australians” (and those not particularly concerned, apparently) with a “call to action” against gay marriage. A Crikey reader found this pamphlet in their letterbox and “spent too long over breakfast defacing it” …
Among Nile’s Bible-borrowing tips for defeating any motion: meet your local federal MP, write to your local newspaper, ring talkback stations (“express your opposition to same-s-x homos-xual ‘marriage’ and your support for traditional Aussie Marriage between a man and a woman”) and support upcoming prayer rallies and a “Jesus March” in Sydney. The Labor Party platform on gay marriage is, he says, “the greatest challenge to our Christian heritage, culture and values”.
A new bed on the road to Canberra. Australians know the road to Canberra — or the city itself, let’s be honest — doesn’t exactly scream sophistication and style. But for some reason US brand Tommy Bahama thought the journey to our capital perfectly summed up its luxury range of furniture, with its “rugged beauty and indigenous style”.
The homely range offers “an outback vibe with out front style”, according to the company website. Not surprisingly, it’s not actually available in Australia.
(Road to Canberra) – But they are! They have a store in Victoria, anyway.
CROMWELL PTY LTD
94 High Street, Prahran, Melbourne, VIC 3181
No store in Canberra, as such.
And to Reverend Nile, I’d remind him that “The Lord is a Shoving Leopard” – but he doesn’t seem to embody that in himself.
Yah, yah, it’s Friday, don’t know what to do, let’s take a cheap shot at Canberra. Please! There is sophistication and style in Canberra, and we who live here know that. We also have bogans, TPT*, and latte-sipping, chardonnay -swilling chatterers. It’s lazy journalism to bag Canberra, and methinks it’s envy-driven. You may be chuckling in Melbourne or Sydney, but we are happy and content here in the ‘Berra.
Your Daily Terrorgraph-style throw-away line ” Canberra. Australians know the road to Canberra — or the city itself, let’s be honest — doesn’t exactly scream sophistication and style” is disappointingly lazy and inaccurate journalism. Today in Canberra I could visit a sublime exhibition of renaissance painting by 15th and 16th century Italian masters, or a collection of world-famous manuscripts dating back ten centuries. Canberra has the best-educated and most affluent population in the country, the highest number of restaurants per capita, and arguably Australia’s leading university. It may not have the hipster cafes of Brunswick Street or the brawny gleam of Bondi. It is undoubtedly quieter – I don’t miss a daily inhalation of toxins and nanoparticles on a near stationery M5 or in the Burnley Tunnel, and greatly enjoy my bike ride to work through parkland without regular fear of death by motoring Russian Roulette – and heck, it may not offer the instant gratification an exhausted media junkie may crave on weekends. But you are just plain wrong this time. If I want low-rent, prejudice-pandering trash I’ll grab a Murdoch tabloid. I’d prefer not to be exposed to it in the Crikey that I love. Please desist immediately.
Well the kangaroo logo is pretty apt. There are kangaroos all over the place. A group of cars recently had to stop around parliament house to allow a mob of roos across the road to graze on the lawns. It really is a bush capital but about 2,000 kangaroos are killed each year on the roads (according to the segment on ABC’s 7.30 Report last night).